Spiritual Blogs

Great name, eh?  The original is from:  http://www.ashtarcommandcrew.net/forum/topics/japan-suspends-annual-whale?id=2859786%3ATopic%3A660687&page=6#comments

That was my immediate response.

It helps to step back and re-evaluate one's opinions once in a while.

How is something good or bad?  How do you know?  Divine creed?  Your own impulses?

"Divine creed" includes, by the way, Hindu texts, Christian texts, a lot of the New Age texts.  And more.

And if something disgusts you, ask yourself:  first, is it necessary for me to exist in this world?  Second, is there something (perhaps an issue, past life, or something else?) that may be causing this, is it fear-based?  Fear based being, I wouldn't want that done to me, so I don't want it done to someone else.  Or other things possibly.

I mean, I could launch into a whole essay about how killing is vital for everything we do.

Firstly:  what is killing?  It is the disruption of an organic system to the point that the system is unable to support itself.  Your body is an organic system; a spear through your chest would disrupt your system to the point of no return (unless there is some incredible resuscitation technologies).  Same with an environment, if you disrupt it enough you cause it to wither away.  It's really hard to do that though, since there's always a source of energy (the sun or the earth).  But it can be disrupted so that most aspects go away, like if you had all your limbs cut off, you might still live albeit very uncomfortably.

So, if you look at the environment, it is always killing parts of itself.  Everything's killing everything.  Mice eat grain, cats eat mice, barbarians eat cats.  Your gut (if you're a regular human) is comprised of several billions of bacteria, which in their war to kill each other give by-products that enable all the other cells to live.  Of course, all bacteria are are simply just big bundles of compounds operating on a complex series of protein patterns (that we call DNA) that follow the chemical series of rules that make more of themselves (otherwise they wouldn't be here now would they?).

In the environment, there are limited resources.  Limited space, limited time, limited materials with which to further self-reproduction (reproduction is not the purpose of life, it is simply the only way to continue life).  There is no fathomable "purpose" in all this, and there is no thing technically "wrong" with that, since technically our sense of right and wrong (based on modern science) are just the expressions of big huge vast complexes of interacting neurons that lie within our brain.  "Right" and "wrong" exist to make sure that we do not break the social rules that our physiology and survival are based upon.

Now, all that is what is technically true, based on the blind, pure observations of science.

Then we get into this spiritual stuff.  Is "right and wrong" an expression of what is actually the way things work?  Trickle-down creation policy?  Is there something we do not see?

The second question comes first.  Based on my observations of others' observations, yes, indeed, there is something we definitely do not see.  I have investigated this minimally, trying to conduct a few experiments that may get me some first-hand proof of the existence of the so called "occult studies."  The quirky thing about this is that, to do this, you must mix yourself in the spiritual dogma that pervades all areas of it.  I tried to figure out the most approachable and confirmable way to prove this, which lead me to the blogs of Reiz.  (Not trying to plug you here.) 

However, there is large conflict on the observations.  Many different peoples' ways of experimentation and their different perspectives have led to a veritable hodge-podge of ideas and philosophies.  These all must have an element of truth to them, because otherwise they wouldn't exist (there is no pure lie).  So it begs the question, perhaps the reason for the general disbelief in the occult theories is perhaps grounded in the fact that every observation is irrevocably based on the individual making the observation, as opposed to physical science, which is imperically provable?  The answer, I find, is almost yes.

There seems to be a base of truth on which every individual's experience is based upon.  However, the truth is very hard to tease out, since 1.  Every observation is almost wildly different and is mixed up in scientifically imperturbable area known as "religion,"  2.  There are very little explorations into the field itself (based, again, upon the mixing with "religion").

My own conclusions have largely been based upon the beliefs of those that I have learned from, notably Anush, Reiz, and Rae (sorry, again, not trying to plug you), along with interaction with those that, as far as I technically know, can only exist within the confines of my imagination.  There is very little proof that any part of those experiences are real, save from a few emotions and sensations (the feeling of electricity running through my head, for example, or the sensation of a sword through my chest seriously handicapping my breathing); and even if those emotions and experiences are real, how can I prove the other things, reliably, that I have experienced in the so-called spiritual realms?

There are a few ways that I may be able to prove it:  one, conducting experiments that, were none of the "occult" ideologies true, should not be able to succeed.  Two, if I have an encounter with another that I know in this world "up there," we may be able to separately correlate our experiences together.  Three, I may be able to directly influence some separate aspect while "up there" (such as, say, knocking over a lamp in a different house).

And, even if I did validate the existence and reality of large parts of the so called spiritual realms, how do I answer the first question:  knowing what is right or what is wrong?

One answer is intuition. This is tricky, as it doesn't rely on any scientific method for reaching a conclusion.  It also depends on the perception of the person who is receiving the intuition:  one person may interpret that feeling as "move somewhere safer," while another may see it as "ask for a raise today."  Using intuition to validate an idea is tricky.

Another answer is reasoning and philosophy.  This method is more widely used, even though it is just as tricky:  one may reach a false conclusion based on incorrect information or lack of information.  This is how the scientific method developed, placing the extensive and sometimes overreaching gathering of accurate information to support its argument.

These are mainly the two ways of proving a point that I can observe.  Both ways can experience improved results through practice and removal of bias.  Intuition's bias stems reportedly from issues that one has not resolved, from the past of a life or the past lives (which is an assumption, by the way, but admissible; a large tenet of occult theory revolves around the fact that reincarnation is real, and that the past life of an individual affects their current state; it is an assumption in intuition that is just as important as the assumption of math's rules, for instance the five assumptions that make up all of geometry), along with lack of information on interpreting the information received through intuition correctly.  Reasoning bias comes from what can be arguably the same thing:  personal issues, and incorrectly interpreting the information.  How to correctly interpret information is unknown, since it again relies upon the individual's perspective, but there exists several guides and teachers that help in doing so.  Teachers are rare to find, though.

So, we still have not answered the question:  what is right, and what is wrong?  I base my response on what I have learned from others, along with what those who believe solely in evolutionary theory say:  that which furthers or allows our reproducing, and that which furthers our learning, is right; what hinders our existence (ability to reproduce) and what restricts our learning, is wrong.

Thus, the question of right and wrong is miraculously turned into the question of what allows survival along with what allows learning.  One must define what is survival, and what is learning.  Survival, simply, is the ability to live until reproduction, and to learn as well, in an environment that simultaneously defines and is defined by its inhabitant(s).  Learning is the pursuit of that which is unknown.  Why must we learn?  It is in our nature, as one reason, but for another, without learning, there would be a hindrance on survival:  if you do not learn, you will die.  Thus, learning is inextricably bound with survival.  By evolutionary theory, in the majority of the population (given random mutation), the common characteristics would be to be able to survive, and to be able to learn, at least to the degree to survive within a given environment. 

So why must we pursue extra learning?  To survive better; surviving better means you will survive to reproduce, and there will be more of those like you who are able to survive and learn better ("learn" might be seen as "adaptation," but it is a separate, although not far too distant, definition; it is more like the spiritual or human variety of adaptation).

An open mind, then, is beneficial to survival; it allows for learning.  But a conclusion must be reached as well, or else nothing will be learned, everything will simply remain under consideration.  This can lead to such things as solipsism.  Too many definitions, and you become mired in dogma.  Balance is key.

So, again, it's by now painfully obvious that I've successfully dodged the question:  still, what is right, what is wrong?  Or, rather, what allows for survival and learning?

Since it depends on the context, we must define the context.  The question in consideration is, whether or not the killing of whales allows for survival and learning?  The parties involved are, of course, the whales, and the people killing them (in this case the Japanese).  Optimally, when both parties survive and reproduce is the best scenario.

But do we consider the souls or the bodies?  According to some occult theories, everything that happens is to help to learn; survival is guaranteed, since souls cannot be destroyed; thus, the only factor is the time in which this takes place.  The quicker you learn, the better.  The question becomes, then, is being killed by a human/ killing a whale learning?  Is it hindering learning, or is it aiding it?

The whale, by not being killed, would have more time in its current life to be able to learn.  It takes time to grow up again as a whale (even though time is infinite, it must be used wisely; otherwise, one becomes stuck in a perpetual state of not learning), or something else, and to continue learning what you were trying to learn.  A life is more valuable, then, than an amount of food or minimal research that could be replaced by something else.  Thus, killing a whale, considering only the soul aspect, is wrong.

On the physical aspect, killing a whale is just the disruption of a series of biological reactions; there is nothing inherently "wrong" with it.  However, based on my tentative conclusions, there is no solely physical aspect that is not involved with the spiritual; it is still the hindrance of learning, so it is still wrong.

If one were to only consider the physical, then there is no right or wrong.  It's just compounds disconnecting and reconnecting, bouncing around and transferring energy.  This is the distinguishing factor between purely technological societies and spiritual societies: the lack of information of the existence of the spiritual realms.

Some counter arguments to the conclusion that killing whales is wrong say that it is wrong to place the blame on the Japanese.  There are the several people who actually spear the whale, there are those who fund it, etc, but there are not the Japanese:  that is only a vague idea.  The Japanese are not a concrete object, it is simply a figure with which we can stereotype about and make large, vague conclusions about.  It completely ignores context, the context of each individual person, what information they lack, how each person is different.  The "Japanese" is as nonexistent as the idea of "All blacks are evil coke-snorting maniacs who kill white people for fun" or "An organization exists that manipulates every aspect of your life"; they might have some degree of truthfulness (the first less so than the second, or the other way around to some people), but to make a wide, sweeping conclusion like that ignores the context of every member of the stereotype that is made.  The counter-argument, in a sense, is correct, since there exists no such real thing as the Japanese to be making a sweeping generalization about.

And there are some who say that there even exists no such thing as right or wrong, when it comes to judging.  For those, I can only ask them how do they define their life?  Life must have a definition, a goal, unless otherwise you wish to accomplish nothing.  A goal, of course, requires a definition of right and wrong:  that which is right is towards you goal, and that which is wrong is against your goal.  So, either they seek to accomplish nothing at all, which will result in them withering away and dieing (and being eliminated from the genetic pool), or their survival is completely and wholly dependent on something else (which is almost completely impossible given free will), or they must be lying.  I hope that they are lying.

However, they have a point when they point out the fallacies of immediate and permanent judging:  doing such an activity makes an unfounded assumption, which, even though is required in some cases (such as the question of immediate survival, life-or-death situations), there may be a change in the information that you have at your disposal.  A good judgment is an open one; those who cannot judge accurately, or at least allow for change, learn less, and survive less.

So!

I think I addressed everything I was thinking about there.  It's my inner Jean-Jacques Rousseau.